


To the Moon

by theLiterator



Series: Ends of the Earth [1]
Category: Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU, Grayson (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Brother Feels, Clones, Doubt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Secrets, Gen, Homecoming, Resurrection, Spyral, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A newly resurrected Damian Wayne does not believe Dick Grayson is dead.</p>
<p>Spyral has been quietly helping to deal with the aftermath of Leviathan's reign of terror and is wary of clones.</p>
<p>Dick Grayson does not believe Damian Wayne is alive.</p>
<p>(Together they fight crime, but's always been true, hasn't it?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naimeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naimeria/gifts).



> I wrote this with the intentions of getting me some post-resurrection Dick&Damian brother feels with much encouragement and cheerleading from Naimeria.
> 
> This is probably closer to pre-Flashpoint characterization than post, because I kind of stopped reading DC for 2 years, and frankly I loved Dick!Bats to Damian's Robin, so that's the characterization and relationship I used.

"No." 

The word came out flat and cold. His father's face, when it turned toward him, was blank. Damian fought to school his as well.

"No what, son?" his father asked, and Damian squared his shoulders.

"No, Grayson is not dead."

"Damian--" his father rubbed a hand over his face. "I've only just gotten _you_ back. Don't--"

Damian shook his head to cut his father off. "Do not think to _order_ me, Father. I _will_ do what's necessary."

"Dick is _dead_ ," his father said. "Your disagreement does not change that fact. I suggest you grieve and move on; the rest of us have, and it is cruel to--"

Damian did not get to hear the rest of the lecture, because he was already leaving; already gone.

***

His gear had been denied him, but he'd built caches and safe houses throughout the city in his time as Robin, and in the time before. He'd been taught to prepare for every outcome, and here was an outcome he hadn't liked, but had still prepared for.

The clothes were armored, a solid, matte black, and his cape concealed a daisho instead of Robin's customary single blade. His body ached and more than ached, but he was alive, and so was Grayson.

But if Grayson was alive, but not here? Then he likely required Damian's assistance. Grayson was weak like that.

(And so, Damian thought, was he.)

***

He had none of the resources he would have had as Robin, but that did not mean that he was without resources. He let it be known that he was looking for someone of Grayson's build, of Grayson's skill, and he waited for the information to come in.

His father searched for him.

His father's adopted strays searched harder for him.

He had his grandfather’s contacts, his mother’s money; he would find Grayson (because Grayson could not be dead.)

He thought, when they first got the drop on him, that they were on his side, meant to take him back to the manor. He did not fight to kill, and that was what ruined him.

***

Damian woke to a room that was filthy with blood and stank of fear, and it took him long moments to orient himself. He was drugged and bound to a flat surface, probably not wooden.

Many training exercises had started this way for him, but this did not have the texture of something his mother had arranged.

Abruptly, he was reminded that his mother was _dead_ , and so it could not be her who had taken him.

He wriggled his fingers, testing the give on the cuffs that held him, and a soft, masculine voice said “He’s awake.” He froze. Stupid, careless error; now would be an excellent time for his intermittent, uncontrollable meta abilities to rear their head. He strained against the bonds, but nothing gave.

He turned his head in the direction of the voice.

“I’m glad to see your pretty blue eyes, son.” Definitely a man, definitely dangerous.

Damian scoffed. “ _You_ are not my father,” he retorted, even as he tried to focus on the meditations he’d been working on with his father, trying to summon the abilities.

Father had a theory that the abilities would settle once he went through puberty, as was the norm for many meta-humans. Since they had come from an external source and not his own genetic mutation, Damian was sure that no theory could be anything but blind, hopeful guessing.

He might never have control.

He certainly did not now.

“You’re probably wondering why we brought you here instead of killing you, aren’t you? Matron, you go ahead and explain.”

“You’re supposed to be dead, caro,” she said softly, leaning over to pet his hair. He blinked at her. “Every agency that has ever had contact with the League systematically destroyed every clone that they could find. Yet here you are, looking into things we just can’t let slide.”

“I don’t understand,” Damian whispered, feeling cold fear seize him. He was lying; he had to lie, because the alternative--

There had been more clones. The only reason his eyes burned hot with emotion was the presence of drugs in his system. “I’m not a clone,” he added. “You know where he is, don’t you? He’s not dead, and I’m not a clone.”

The woman, the _Matron_ , hit him. It couldn’t break his jaw, but it still hurt. He’d thought, before he’d had the ability, that invulnerability meant no more pain. He’d _craved_ that, spent precious hours imagining how different his life would be if they simply could not hurt him, but the reality was far worse: he couldn’t pass out, his bones did not break, his bruises faded back to unblemished skin within hours. But the pain? Every hurt they inflicted lingered, and so much more could happen when one didn’t pass out from agony.

When one could no longer die.

“Oh, honey,” the Matron said when he was bloody and gasping. “I’ll let it end, I’ll let him destroy you once you tell us one tiny detail, okay?”

“I want Grayson,” Damian snarled. He was no relation to her for endearments, and he did not _want_ her mercy. With how his day was progressing, she would try to burn him alive and he wouldn’t die of it, merely burn until someone took mercy on him and stopped it; better to reveal his own desires and have them exploited than _that_.

“Do you know what it would do to him, to see you?” she whispered into his ear. “Can you even fathom how it would break him?”

Damian seized on that detail, twisting to try to bite her. Perhaps it was the drugs keeping him still, keeping his abilities dormant.

“He _is_ alive then!” he snarled when she avoided him easily.

Her eyes narrowed with anger. “Where were you kept? I need the coordinates. We have to make certain there are no more accidents.”

“I’m not a clone!” he screamed as the man drove steel under his skin. “Where is he? I have to see him; he isn’t dead. I have to--”

Unconsciousness didn’t take hold of him, but the pain turned into a long wash of sensation that was so unending and unchanging that it may as well have been unconsciousness. He certainly could not have recalled any details of the span, nor how long they kept him on that table.

“Perhaps he doesn’t know,” the Matron suggested gently. Damian could barely hear her under the sound of harsh panting breaths and hoarse groans of pain. “He is withstanding far more than even we suspected.”

“His training was perfect; I was involved in it personally with the original, as you know. Doubtless they tried to eliminate all flaws on the second try.”

“I don’t think he’s going to talk,” she said.

“Growing squeamish?” the man asked, and Damian, knowing now that he must _know_ him, tried desperately to place that voice with a face. He had stared right at him earlier, but his near-perfect recall was useless.

“Do you blame me? He looks like a little boy.”

Damian struggled anew at that. “I’m _not_ a child,” he snarled. He’d had that drilled into his head daily since he was old enough to know what it meant. He was an heir; he was _the_ heir. It did not matter that others would always be found more suitable; it did not matter that his father and his grandfather were so at odds that he must claim only one or the other. Nothing changed that single, basic fact. “I am the _heir_ ,” he hissed.

“Well, clearly the serum is working,” the man said disinterestedly (and how could he tell emotions but not recall a single feature of the man’s face once he looked away?).

The Matron leaned toward him again and stroked his hair. It reminded him, overwhelmingly, of his mother, and he recoiled from the touch.

_Comfort is fleeting, my son,_ she would whisper. _But there will always be pain. You must learn to embrace it before you can inflict it with any skill._

“Well,” the man said. “That’s… interesting.”

“What is? I don’t speak enough… Arabic? To make that out.”

“The fact that it is Arabic is interesting. None of the accelerated-growth clones had the nurses and bodyguards that the original had, to learn Arabic from.”

“They could have implanted it. They implanted everything else.”

“Perhaps… but what else might they have implanted then?”

“You don’t think--”

“I am summoning Agent 37,” he said.

“But--”

“Are you arguing with me, Matron?”

“No sir.”

“Good; get him cleaned up as best you can. I expect you would prefer to not distress Agent 37 too severely.”

Her hand went to his hair again. “If I loosen the cuffs, can you sit up?”

“I can,” he gritted out. They were bringing him Grayson, and then this misunderstanding would be over; he could sit up for that.

She had a cloth, and warm water, and she bathed his face with it. “Considering how quickly you healed up from the fight that subdued you, I would have thought-- well. Maybe they didn’t hit as hard as I’d assumed.”

So his face felt swollen because it _was_ swollen. Yet another possible thing to blame on the drugs they were pumping through his system.

He wondered if the man suspected his meta abilities, or if it was a side-effect of a common drug that neither his Father nor Drake had foreseen.

She swiped away much of the blood he could see on his bare flesh, and she cut away the last of his clothing. He frowned at that. The room was chill, and he was averse to nudity while in the power of people who would do him harm. (Once they brought Grayson to him, they would know he was not their enemy, so he wouldn’t call them that. Not if they were Grayson’s allies.)

At least they hadn’t been able to break any bones.

Grayson’s cheerful protest heralded his appearance. “You know, I thought you _wanted_ me to teach those girls acrobatics; I don’t _have_ to.”

“I knew it!” Damian said. He’d meant to snap it out, like an accusation, but it came out relieved. “I knew you couldn’t possibly be dead; I knew you--”

But Grayson’s eyes were flat and cold and the blank stare he was being given wasn’t _right_. “Grayson?” he asked, hating that he had to show weakness in front of these strangers, hating that Grayson’s mere _expression_ was enough to _cause_ weakness.

“What the hell is this,” Grayson said. Damian realized, then, that Grayson was not, in fact going to solve this misunderstanding. 

“Agent 37, we had thought all facilities destroyed, but this one makes it clear that some clones yet exist. We’ve been trying to discover its origins and perhaps who released it, but it says it will only speak to you.”

She had been perfectly willing to refer to Damian as ‘him’ before, so the depersonalization was definitely for Grayson’s benefit.

“I’m not a clone,” he insisted yet again.

Grayson came up to him then, but he didn’t touch him.

“How come he’s the right age?” he asked. “I thought if they did that growth acceleration stuff, they came out… wrong.”

“They _do_ ,” Damian said. “I’m not a clone. I’m…” except he didn’t know how much they all knew about the Secret, and he didn’t know what was safe to say and what wasn’t. “You’re my brother,” he settled on, but he knew that was wrong. He’d never been the one to declare that sentiment, he’d always left it to Grayson. It was too out of character, but he was desperate. He wanted Dick to wrap his arms around him and promise that he would always be _his_ Robin, no matter what, forever. He wanted this _nightmare_ of a reunion to end.

He had to admit, quietly, that his father had been right; he ought to have left well enough alone.

“Of course you are, _Damian_ ,” Grayson said, but his voice wasn’t right; too falsely tender, not exasperated enough. His face remained an impassive mask. “I’ll take him up,” he said. “Me and my _brother_ need to catch up. You know, we’re both dead, so it’ll be fun.”

Damian shivered. He suddenly did not want to go anywhere with a Grayson who didn’t believe him to be who he claimed. Still, if Grayson took him from this room, he’d have a chance at escape. He could go home and he could tell Gordon. Tell _Drake_. They would be able to repair _this_ , since Grayson knew they were themselves.

The clothes he was handed were soft, thin, and useless for anything but modesty. He put them on anyway, because they would be less conspicuous than nudity.

“Much better,” Grayson said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. He offered Damian his hand, and Damian scoffed at the gesture, but took it when Grayson flinched. It was the slightest of movements, but Damian could read Grayson better than anyone.

Once they were upstairs, he could see that they were in a cool, temperate climate, that the buildings surrounding them were old and just slightly familiar. “Where are we?” he asked, and they rounded a corner so that before Grayson could summon a lie to answer him with, he said “This is St. Hadrians. Are those-- do you work for _Leviathan_? You can’t--” he wrenched his hand free and tripped three steps back. “You’re supposed to be the one I can trust!” he snapped. “You’re supposed to be-- I didn’t want you to avenge my death, because I am _not_ Todd, but you _work for them_.”

“This won’t work, you know,” Grayson said coldly. “You aren’t… you aren’t him. I held his body. I held him for hours, and his father buried him; I was there. You can’t trick me.”

“I’m not trying to trick you!” Damian shouted, and he lunged, going for Grayson’s side where he knew he left himself open because he was used to having someone there to shore him up. Grayson’s reaction was quick, and he snapped out a blow that would have connected had he been armed with escrima, but here, barefisted, fell short.

Damian fought him. He’d been fighting Grayson for a long time, training with him and sometimes just for spite, but never had he fought with Grayson when he didn’t care if he hurt his opponent. That had always been his weakness-- his compassion. This ruthlessness was new, and shocking, and, Damian admitted privately, awful.

“What happened to you?” he asked plaintively, only to catch a kick to his ear. He let it propel him, ignoring the pain, and flipped backwards in a move Grayson had taught him. He caught a glimpse of an audience, older girls, mostly, peeking around building edges and through windows.

“Maybe, just maybe, someone murdered my little brother, _Damian_.”

Damian jerked back, disbelieving. That couldn’t have been it. He remembered Dick after their father’s supposed death, and after Drake, whom Grayson viewed also as a brother, had defected. He’d still been stupidly, catastrophically _compassionate_. Grief simply did not affect Grayson in that way. He refused to believe it.

Grayson took advantage of his distraction, as he ought to, and found one of the unhealing injuries his compatriots had inflicted, sending Damian to the ground with a crash.

Grayson was on top of him immediately, pinning him with his body, snarling in his face. “Tell me where you came from,” he said.

Damian shook his head. “Father fixed it,” he whispered. “That’s where I came from. Father fixed everything except you, and I--”

He should have left it be.

“That isn’t true,” Grayson said, but his hand was gentle through Damian’s hair. “I guess-- it looks like you really believe that, even if I never saw Damian look that earnest in his life. If it were true, I would have been informed.”

Details slotted into place then; Grayson was playing a double agent, somehow, someway, and so Father had known of his survival all along, which explained much. It didn’t explain why he hadn’t simply informed Damian, but that wasn’t exactly out of character.

“He likes his secrets,” Damian replied on a whisper, even though he knew Grayson wouldn’t accept it.

Grayson shut his eyes. “Well. There’s a lot going on here and not enough privacy to discuss it. I… believe that you believe you’re him, okay? And as long as you don’t start bringing me the heads of my enemies, you can stay here. I’ll figure out a way to put them off from destroying you. And at the end of the week, I’ll have the means to make further decisions, okay.”

“They may insist on keeping me drugged in that room,” Damian pointed out. “That would make the most sense.”

He refused to allow his emotion to show when Grayson shrugged. “That may be for the best,” he said coolly. Damian’s gut filled with icy trepidation, but he nodded curtly. The rest of the week. He could endure for a week.

Grayson shook his head suddenly, and rubbed his hands over his face. “No, you’re right, I won’t allow that. God, why are you so-- how can you be-- Ugh.”

“Why won’t you believe me?” Damian asked. “You believed Todd.”

“I can’t,” Grayson said. “I-- I just can’t.” The pain crossing his features made Damian reach out. He knew the mechanics of a reassuring embrace, but Grayson was stiff against his arms. He didn’t pull away; in fact he carefully gathered Damian up and stood, casting a glance around at the girls.

Many of them giggled at the sight of them, and Grayson set Damian carefully on his feet, which reminded Damian that those had been brutalized too. He sucked in a breath rather than make a noise of pain, and Grayson ignored him.

“Come along, then,” Grayson said. “My room is this way.”

Grayson’s room was very… Grayson. It was obvious the space had been designed to be spartan and economical, but there were bright splashes of posters for a local nightclub, and random junk that could be purchased for cheap anywhere: an empty vase, a dark green comforter on the bed. Damian didn’t have to touch it to know it was polyester: useless for warmth.

He did not make a move to inspect the room, for he’d caught sight of four surveillance bugs on his first glance, and instead went to the farthest corner from Grayson’s desk to settle, legs crossed under him, to meditate.

He opened his eyes several hours later, power thrumming under his skin, mostly healed, to see the Matron carrying, awkwardly, a wooden case.

“I brought it something to occupy itself,” she said. Damian wondered if she was at all aware of the fact that by bringing him a gift, she was negating all attempts to present him as not human.

Damian watched her as she handed it to Grayson, watched as she darted in to leave a kiss on his cheek. Grayson allowed it, but he did not enjoy it.

Damian tried to discern why, but body language alone was failing him.

“Art?” Grayson asked, abruptly wary. Damian went to his feet in a single, perfect motion that only the cameras saw.

“You told me once, remember? That your little brother liked drawing?”

Grayson stared at the case, and, wary, Damian crept up to flank the woman. “Helena, it’s not him. He probably doesn’t--”

“Draw?” Damian asked. 

Now knowing it was an option (everything he’d ever drawn had been ripped apart once, and he hadn’t dared try it since. His father’s face-- his father.) his fingers itched to take the case away, to hoard whatever was in it (hopefully inks and pens, or maybe charcoal) to _draw_.

Grayson shook his head and leaned back. “What’s the last thing you remember?” he asked, hoarse and tired sounding. Damian was tempted, then, to lie, but he knew Grayson would never trust him if he did so, and he needed Grayson to believe him more than anything else on the planet right now.

“I remember you screaming; I remember father calling my name. I remember the--” He remembered thinking that he must protect _his_ family a all costs, and he remembered, simultaneously, thinking he could win. There had been an opening in his brother’s guard.

It had been a feint, and Damian had died on the point of a sword. Everything swam hot and dark except the face of his killer, and he gasped frantically for breath, clutching at his clothing, at his chest where he was whole and unscarred.

“He’s having a panic attack,” the Matron said, and Grayson’s hands, familiar and longed-for, lifted him up deposited him on the bed. “It’s the programming breaking down. I’ve seen it before.”

“Or it’s a flashback followed by a panic attack,” Grayson said.

As Damian had suspected, the fabric of the bedspread was slick polyester, and he opened one eye a slit to reveal a sea of green. Grayson’s hand ran gently down his back and rubbed soothingly at his shoulders. He shrugged off the contact and tried to regain control of himself.

“I do not succumb to panic attacks,” Damian said stiffly. Grayson snorted. Damian could almost hear the unspoken ‘Of course not, little D,’ but Grayson did not think him _real_ , so he did not say it. “You have poor taste in decoration, Grayson,” he added, sniffing.

“Well,” Grayson said. “You’re welcome to allow the Matron here to find you alternative accommodation.

The Matron made a small noise of protest, eyes flicking between the two of them, and Damian realized _she believed him._ It was worse than a blow to the gut, and he had to withdraw back to his corner.

Grayson sighed. “I’m not--”

“Here,” the Matron said, talking over Grayson. “Amuse yourself.”

Damian took the case from her and settled back on the floor to open it and examine its contents.

He was sketching idly when he got a surge; a weird moment where his meta abilities reared up and made themselves known. These were the moments that had led to his father grounding him, had led to him demanding to know Grayson’s location, had lead him _here_. He’d been inking a sketch of his mother (her body curved in a perfect kata, her lips quirked in a sardonic grin that meant nothing but pain.) when the new, good quality pen crumpled in his hand. The ink splashed out everywhere, soaking his prisoner’s clothing and the page and the carpet.

He did not move for long moments, even as the ink began to soak in, dark, shining black turning to matte and spreading, dripping, drying.

He needed to stand, to begin cleanup, but he was afraid to move, afraid of what might happen. Desperately, his eyes sought out Grayson, who was busy typing something at his desk.

Damian opened his mouth, then stopped, unsure what to do, what to _say_. “Grayson,” he ended up settling on, half plea, half demand.

Grayson turned halfway, irritation scripted through his muscles, but then he caught sight of Damian and he crossed the room in a moment to kneel before Damian. His hands carefully pried the mangled remains of the pen from his fist, and he bit his lip into a familiar frown.

“What happened?” he asked, tugging Damian to his feet and into the en suite. He turned the water in the sink on cold and shoved Damian’s hands under the water before relinquishing them. 

Damian stared at his hands, numbing under the water, and the places where the pen had dug into his skin but not bruised it or cut it.

“Father was right,” he said, because he knew Grayson wanted an explanation, and because he knew that if he gave one, Grayson would never believe him to be real. “I can’t control it.”

“Okay,” Grayson said, instead of trying to hug him or comfort him.

Damian ached with it.

“I’m going back down to their room,” he said suddenly, drawing his hands out from under the faucet. The black had mostly run off, leaving behind a dark smudge against his skin.

“What?”

He wanted their drugs again, and he’d rather endure their idea of physical torture for a year than another hour of a Grayson who held no special affection for him.

He shivered when he realized-- _he wanted their drugs again._

He sat down heavily and stared at the ink stain on his pants, and then Grayson was turning on the faucet in the bathtub and flushing the toilet.

“Tell me,” he said, and when Damian looked up, Grayson looked exhausted and sallow in the fluorescent light.

“There was a complication in bringing me back,” Damian whispered under the sound of running water.

Grayson nodded.

“I gained meta-abilities.”

“Superstrength,” Grayson agreed. “Accelerated healing.”

“And I can’t sustain severe injuries anymore,” Damian agreed. “My neck won’t break, my ribs won’t snap.”

“You were pretty bruised up before,” Grayson said, a spark of his familiar warmth suffusing the words. Concern, disgust, resignation, all warring for control, all yielding to that soft, warm little bit of _Grayson_.”

“Something in their drugs,” he said, shrugging. “Could be deliberate, could be coincidental.”

Grayson nodded slowly. “So, where did you come from? Where were you… resurrected.”

He still didn’t believe, but the Matron did. Damian shook his head and let his hair (loose and curling where it had once been cropped short. A year of missed haircuts, and he wasn’t sure he minded. Mother was dead, and Father could never see him but for his flaws, so what did it matter if his hair was too long?) fall into his eyes.

“That information is classified,” he said, and he meant the Cave. Gordon and Drake and Todd had all been there, and Grayson would hear their reports to believe him soon enough.

Grayson shook his head instead of smiling at the poor attempt at humor, and Damian sighed.

“Get showered,” Grayson told him. “That ink’s already going to stain, but you can probably get the worst of it off. I’ll figure out some clothing for you.”

He slept that night in a bundle of blankets on Grayson’s floor, and he knew he wasn’t imagining the sensation of Grayson’s fingers brushing his hair out of his face at dawn, but he didn’t dare open his eyes to check.

It was wrong, all of it, but it was more right than his father’s increasing restrictions as he’d struggled with the unpredictable abilities had been. He felt… safe.

He followed Grayson around the whole next day, huddling quietly in the corner of whatever room his brother happened to be in while everyone pretended he didn’t exist. He drew-- he drew. He knew it was telling, revealing everything, but he had to draw it, he--

It was the very last thing he could remember, overriding his father’s voice and Nightwing’s struggle.

It was the face of his murderer.

“Stop,” the Matron whispered. He’d been scratching at the edges of the eyes, trying to get them right, and she had dropped her hand down over his work, smudging the charcoal he’d decided to use instead of ink after the pen.

He froze.

“Damian, listen to me,” she said, crouching down so they were nearly nose to nose. “Your arrival here, it wasn’t foreseen, and Spyral is terrified of losing what little hold they have over him. You-- you can’t let him find out that you aren’t what Spyral thinks, because then _they’ll_ know. They’ll use you for leverage.”

“Over what?” Damian asked, just as quietly. It couldn’t be his father-- Grayson himself perhaps?

“Ra’s.”

Damian shook his head incredulously. “Father says Grandfather is--”

“The League, then. They’re in _shambles_ , and there’s splinter faction upon splinter faction of Leviathan and the League itself, and _you_ could unite them.”

“I made my choice,” Damian said as firmly as he always did. The doubt that filled his guts and withered his resolve every time he had to face his father’s disappointment still had not worn through.

“Spyral doesn’t care, caro. They just want the power you would represent.”

Damian carefully pulled his page out from under her hand. “Thank you for your concern,” he said politely. “Grayson and I will be leaving at the end of the week, though.”

“Have you-- did your daddy have you talking to someone?”

“About what?” Damian asked. He had those pastels-- maybe if he made the eyes _blue_ , that would be enough to satisfy.

His fingers twitched between shades of blue, and he had no real experience with blending pastels but none of these were correct.

“Damian, honey, no one knows what went down the night Leviathan fell; no one aside from you, your father, and Agent 37, but we all hear echoes.”

He decided to lay down the lighter of the shades he wanted first and then smudge on darker until it was exactly right.

“And it doesn’t take a whole lot to add two and two when suddenly there is a run on destroying Leviathan science labs, when suddenly the infant clones of Damian al Ghul are the most expensive things on the black-market and no one knows who the buyers are.”

“What are you implying,” Damian said, switching to red, deep burgundy the first choice, blood dripping from the face’s lips.

“She called him the Heretic, didn’t she? Said he was born of the belly of a whale. She accelerated the growth for some of them, but he was the most coherent, and still he craved only one thing.”

“He never got it,” Damian whispered to his drawing. She had killed him. Father said--

“Put it away, caro,” the Matron said.

His fingers were nerveless and weak when she pulled the pastel from them. The paper she rolled carefully up, wrapping a rubber band around it and setting it in a drawer in her desk. He realized, then, that Grayson had long since departed her office, that they were alone, and he trembled. He had rarely been so inexcusably lax in paying attention to his surroundings.

“Are there any left?” Damian asked.

The Matron smiled. “Agent 37 is preparing for a mission. I’m to introduce you to the girls. This is their first officially sanctioned solo objective, and they are eager to meet you. Come with me.”

The girls were not at all like Gordon, or Cassandra, or even Brown. They crowded him and giggled and did not behave with any sort of restraint or decorum.

It was like being surrounded by Graysons.

“What kind of movies do you like?” One girl asked, only to be immediately overridden by another girl demanding to know whether he wanted pizza, and a third saying “Leave him alone, give him space!” and a fourth asking his name.

“Damian,” he said, and “I don’t watch movies, they are a waste of time,” and “Pizza is an acceptable food, but I will not consume meat.”

“You need a haircut, kiddo,” one girl said, as the others scattered to get movies and pizza, he assumed.. “I refuse, by the way, to call you Damian. Did your parents _want_ you to turn out evil?”

“Yes,” Damian said, smirking, waiting for her to be as discomfitted as he himself was. Instead, the girls all burst out laughing at once, and the one who’d asked said, ruefully. “Guess you’ve heard that one before.”

“It’s a great name,” another girl said, digging around under her bed. “It means ‘conqueror’ in the original Greek.”

“So that I may lay the world at the feet of my parents, yes,” Damian agreed.

She snorted and withdrew a large case in a pink and black animal print. “Of course. You know, I feel sorry for all you legacy types. I’m first gen, so all I need to do is make a name for myself and then retire rolling in money. Sit down, you look like a hedgehog with all that uneven mess.”

Damian froze at the sight of the scissors in her hand.

“I--” he liked it long. He _should_ cut it, he realized, but he didn’t want to. Still--

“I’m just going to even everything up. If your version of a rebellious stage is long hair, so be it. But you can have long hair and not look like a stray cat at the same time. I know it’s a hard concept for boys to grasp.”

“We’re watching Frozen,” a girl announced, waving a movie case. “I was thinking Aladdin, but my disc is scratched all to hell, and we’d have to wait for a torrent.”

“Pizza’s on its way!”

“So, you know Richard?” someone asked. He was dutifully holding still, so he couldn’t see the speaker, and it took him far too long to parse that French-accented pronunciation as Grayson’s given name.

“I do,” he replied.

“Cool! Is he like… your nemesis? That fight was pretty intense.”

“Neither of us was attempting to kill,” Damian said. “Why would you think we were nemeses?”

“ _Because_ neither of you were attempting to kill. If you weren’t nemesises, then he’d have taken you out, no problem.”

“Be nice!”

“He’s like 10! He knows he can’t take on a fully trained adult and win.”

Damian laughed. The room went silent.

“I don’t kill,” he said.

The room stayed quiet for long moments. Then, the girl cutting his hair said, carefully, consideringly. “Sometimes that’s not a practical policy.”

“True,” Damian said. “Still. I don’t.”

“That’s okay, I’m pretty sure Richard doesn’t want to kill you either,” a girl said. 

The pizza was good; they’d ordered him his own, and he ate every slice of it, pretending not to notice the odd, concerned glances the girls shared over his head. The movie was unbearable, and he itched with the forced idleness; the girls had turned out the lights, which meant he could not even draw.

“Perfect, wasn’t it,” the girl who’d cut his hair said on a sigh.

“It was an abhorrent narrative in which the only person with the ability to think beyond his own emotional needs and take care of the responsibilities of leadership is portrayed as a villain and the main characters are rewarded for ignoring their parents’ advice and abandoning their duties,” Damian said.

Laughter again. “Like I said,” the girl repeated, breathless. “Perfect!” 

“Okay, I’ve got Aladdin. Potty break? Reconvene in fifteen, ladies! And… boy, sorry.”

Damian was hauled up from his comfortable nest of pillows and blankets as the girls ushered him out of the room and into the bathroom where they took turns using the stalls. He was, humiliatingly, forced to go into a stall and refused exit until he had, as they said, ‘gone tinkle’ (accompanied by still more laughter.)

“You know, you’re way less of a brat than Richard painted you,” the girl who’d cut his hair said, her hand cupped warm around his.”He was full of advice about how to keep you from turning into a sociopathic little murder-boy, and I haven’t had to use any of it once.”

“And the way Matron was saying, I figured we’d be spending half the night chasing you around the campus, and the other half trying to keep you tied to a chair,” another girl added.

“I don’t wish to leave, though,” Damian said, perplexed.

Fingers tightened around his, and he remembered, belatedly, to squeeze back.

“Well, whatever. Just makes me miss my little brother, is all. He’s… not nearly as bizarre as you, but. Well, he’s my brother.” She shrugged, which sent their joined hands swinging. 

They all piled up to watch the next movie, the same positions as before, and even though he knew he should be on his guard surrounded by strangers as he was, he didn’t last the whole movie.

He awoke when strong hands lifted him off the bed, but didn’t have time to panic before the smell of leather and kevlar and sweat registered, and he settled again, hooking his fingers against the collar of someone’s armor, deftly avoiding trick latches. “I’m capable of walking, B,” he grumbled, irritated and mostly asleep.

A soft indrawn breath, the steady, slow thrum of a heartbeat, the grey light of pre-dawn. It was all familiar, all soothing.

He never came fully to wakefulness before dropping back into a deep, nightmare-wracked sleep.

He woke some time later, slightly disoriented to realize he was no longer in the girls’ dorm room, but the expanse of green polyester he was tucked under was enough to keep him from immediately worrying. The sun was still low and pink in the sky, and he wriggled his toes. He’d dreamt again.

Grayson was typing steadily at his computer, and Damian dismissed him, cataloguing the room around them systematically.

Grayson groaned and shifted, and it was a pained noise, not a tired noise, which had Damian out of the bed and padding across the room in a heartbeat.

Damian scoffed, and Grayson waved him off. There was a new series of scars down Grayson’s spine, which he catalogued and dismissed in favor of the very new injury to his shoulder. Whatever it was, it had bled through the bandaging, and Damian peeled off the tape, and Grayson slapped at his hands.

Belatedly, Damian remembered that this wasn’t… this wasn’t _them_ him, and he took a step back, hands up. The bandage flopped off, revealing a deep wound that bled steadily. It wasn’t jagged or gaping; he should still have had it stitched.

“Go back to sleep,” Grayson said, tone flat and dull. “I’m fine.”

Damian scoffed again, and ignored him in favor of going into the en suite and digging through the cabinet for a first aid kit.

“Hold still, you fool,” he said, and he planted himself firmly at Grayson’s shoulder and withdrew antiseptic, a saline wash, and needle and thread. “You need stitches.”

He washed the wound roughly, but Grayson’s breath barely caught, and the punishment was petty. “Do they not have an infirmary?”

“Yes, but this report needs written,” Grayson said.

“Wounds, ice cream, then reports,” Damian said. “That’s… that’s the rule.”

He realized how childish he sounded too late to stop himself, but it didn’t matter.

“Please… just stop. I don’t know where they got those memories, but--” Grayson sighed. Damian tied off a stitch, poked the needle in again.

“You’re just going to tell me I’m foolish for revealing weakness if I tell you how much it hurts, aren’t you?”

Damian froze. The room was silent in the golden morning light, and the moment seemed to last an eternity.

Damian moved the needle up exactly a half centimeter, and pulled the new stitch through.

“No,” he decided on, finally. “No, I won’t.” Because he did not, more than anything else in the world, want to hurt Grayson.

Even knowing what dying cost, he knew that he would die to protect his brother, and he also knew he would not say that about anyone else.

Grayson let out a long, harsh breath, and he laughed a little. “Thank you? I think. No, I--thanks.”

Damian did not reply; he had a wound to stitch up.

The Matron had Damian sit in on classes with the girls, prying him from Grayson’s room without much difficulty, calling over her shoulder just before the door swung shut “I expect you to get some sleep, Agent 37!”

The first class of the day was held entirely in Arabic, which was shocking to him the way nothing yet had been.

Arabic, for him, had been an expected language, but not one he was encouraged to use. If he used it too often, they would cycle out his tutors and his nurses, and sometimes there would be worse punishment. Still, his facility with the language was often tested; the fear, he thought, was that he would not be able to blend in with his father’s family if he had an accent, if his English wasn’t natural enough, but that not knowing the language of his ancestors would equally displease his grandfather.

To be in a situation where others around him were encouraged to speak it was novel, and he heard himself speak up, correcting, almost absently, a poorly conjugated verb.

The tutor, a beautiful woman who looked not a thing like his mother, smiled at him with surprised pleasure, and she asked him, in careful slow words, how long he’d been studying the language.

He stared at her, and at the door just beyond her.

He replied, the words tasting thick and hot, “I’ve known it my whole life.” His accent was different from hers, he knew, but she smiled.

“Can you read it? Write it?” she asked eagerly.

_”What’s going on?”_ a girl asked in English. It should have shattered the spell, but it didn’t. Damian barely heard her.

“A little,” he replied. “Not as well as I could.”

“We’ll have to see,” she replied, still smiling. “Why do you say that?”

“My mother-- she did not encourage it.”

“Reading and writing?” the tutor demanded, horrified.

“Arabic,” he replied.

The woman nodded and shrugged. “You can help me teach, today,” she told him, and then she started to write the word for “bird” on the wipe-off board at the front of the room, asking questions about the letters and their order.

Damian felt relaxed and light as she had him recite plurals and possessives.

As they were leaving, she handed him a bright little chapter book, the thickness of his smallest finger, and told him his homework was to read as much as he could and tell her what he didn’t understand come morning.

The next class was sword fighting, and he settled back to watch as the girls fought with plastic, buttoned facsimiles of the real thing, and he wondered how they were meant to learn the fear of being wounded, the sharp spark of pain from injury, if they had no edges to their blades.

“I hear you’re the best there is, kid,” one of the several men circulating among the girls said. “What’s your preference?”

“I will not spar.”

“Hey, don’t give me that look. Orders are orders. I’m not going to argue with _them_ , but you’re like, five. You I ain’t scared of. They say you’re something else though, and I’m supposed to figure out exactly what. So pick a sword and come practice with me.”

Among the practice blades there were several to his taste, though none of them had the right weight to them. He chose the two longest katana and brought up a guard.

“Little big for your britches there?”

They sparred. His borrowed shoes felt wrong around his feet, and the blades cut the air differently than he was used to, and his foe was more skilled than he was used to, and it was all too exhilarating to beat him back and back again, until he’d disarmed him, slashing out with a blow that would have maimed if he hadn’t flicked his wrist at the last second and gotten him with the unsharpened edge.

Or, if he weren’t fighting with a dulled weapon.

The man stared up at him. Damian dropped his swords and stalked away, picking up the book he’d been handed and opening it to the scrap of paper he’d torn out of his sketchbook for a marker.

Gradually the noise of combat picked up around the field, and Damian scowled at the page, trying to work out the story from barely-understood writing. He had to sound some of it out, work out the meaning from the way the words tasted on his tongue, and it was far more engrossing than fighting that useless combat tutor could possibly have been.

Grayson collected him just after lunch, which was Italian themed, with the girls from the night before having secured him vegetarian food and had made him “clear his plate” with many simple injunctions to do so in Italian, much like Pennyworth and Grayson were always insisting he do, despite his lack of appetite. He’d scowled at all of them, but they had been undeterred.

“The mirror in my bathroom is broken,” Grayson told him. Damian looked at him, confused.

“Did you break it?” Grayson asked.

Damian shook his head. “Of course not-- of all the childish gestures you could accuse me of--”

“Because you and I are the only people who have been in that bathroom, and I know for a fact it was whole after my shower and before I tucked you in last night.”

“I--”

“Why did you break the mirror?” Grayson asked patiently, implacably.

Damian snarled wordlessly and whirled on him. “I did not!” he shouted.

“Because normally, normally I’d say ‘There are no cuts on his hands,’ and assume someone’s been fucking with my surveillance. But we both know that’s no indication.”

Damian clenched his hands into fists and whirled around to slam them into the side of the nearest building. Stone cracked. Bone did not. Incriminatingly, the cuts healed shut almost before they’d opened.

“Why?” Grayson said.

Damian… he knew why. He hurt with it, even now, hurt with the knowledge that Drake and his father and Pennyworth, who had covered every mirror in the manor, and who had removed the mirrors from his safe houses, had known this weakness before he’d even had a chance to encounter it.

“Can’t you guess,” he whispered.

Grayson shook his head mutely, more a rejection of a truth than a claim not to understand. “Class starts in 15. Get changed.”

Damian’s only concession to the class was to remove his shoes, and he was stretching the way Grayson had taught him when the girls started filtering in.

He had not endured Grayson’s particular brand of training since his resurrection, and he wished to be prepared.

“Are you joining the school?”

“No,” Damian said. “I am waiting for an opportunity to contact my father to come collect me.”

“Wow,” said another girl. “I’m pretty sure that I would pee myself if I thought my dad was going to ‘collect’ me from somewhere.”

Damian shrugged and moved into a new stretch. The girls were all starting to warm up along with him, and he realized that most of them, consciously or not, were copying his motions. He slowed down a little and exaggerated the motions, they way he had for Colin when he’d asked for advice about non-enhanced self-defence.

Grayson came into the room with a quadruple somersault and a fake French accent that made Damian grimace.

“Good afternoon, ladies!”

“Good afternoon, Richard,” they chorused back at him, all except Damian.

Grayson was a skilled tutor; Damian had already known that, but seeing him working with others filled him up with a sense of warring pride and envy, for Damian was not called on in this class. He went through the exercises with the girls, but he was not singled out as he had been before.

Their last class was a lesson in Russian, which was one of Damian’s weakest languages-- he knew enough to get himself into trouble, he’d been told, and so he kept his head down and drew, and drew, and pretended not to care that the pastels smudged into the charcoal and it never came out the right color of blue without being shot all through with black.

***

Damian woke screaming, and there was a solid weight holding him down and blue eyes piercing the darkness to taunt him, and he came up fighting, flinging his attacker into a wall and whirling to follow up with a kick that landed directly between his legs. He retreated to the bathroom and seized a fragment of broken glass and put his back to a solid wall, waiting for his brother to come after him again, sword first and shouting--

And Grayson entered.

Damian dropped the glass and it cracked and broke further, and the blood welling in his palms slowed, stopped, and still he stared at Grayson.

“Are you okay?” Grayson asked, and Damian nodded, not trusting his tongue with the lie. “Let me look at your hands.”

“They’re fine,” Damian said. “It was only a dream.”

“If I hadn’t been suited up--” Grayson cut himself off with a chuckle and a quick headshake. “Doesn’t matter. It was a pretty bad dream, wasn’t it?”

Damian shrugged. “It was merely in my mind. There are worse threats, _real_ threats.”

Grayson took a step forward, and Damian did not retreat only because his back was already pressed firm to the wall.

His hands shot out, and Damian flinched, but all Grayson did was catch Damian’s hands in his own and then, ever so gently, spread them open so he could see that there was no damage.

“Okay, so your hands are, in fact, fine,” Grayson said with a quirking smile. “The dream, on the other hand, wasn’t. You can tell me about it, you know that, right?”

“Tell me they’re all gone,” Damian said instead. “Tell me there won’t be another, and I’ll tell you about my dream.”

Grayson dropped his hand then, reminded, perhaps, that he thought Damian was a clone.

“I hear you get to practice etiquette tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll probably want to be well-rested for that.”

Damian could hold a fork but not conversation.

Damian refused to fire the handgun they’d given him no matter what they tried to bribe him with, repeatedly emptying the clip and handing the pieces back to the instructor.

Damian barely noticed that everyone around him spoke only German at lunch, though the steamed spargel they served him was perfect and unmarred by bacon.

He simply sat and watched as the girls took turns following each other, thinking how very mediocre their efforts were. But as with everything, there didn’t seem to be any penalty for failure.

He walked out of the final class because he was ‘too young to steal cars’ and because he’d changed his mind, he would not wait out the week. He would go home now, and return with reinforcements.

He’d kidnapped Drake before, he could certainly do it again.

***

“You need to look at these, Richard,” the Matron was saying in a low, urgent voice. “I need you to look at them and just… I need you to _look_. I was wrong, letting you think he was a clone before, but. Please, just look.”

Grayson gasped and there was the sound of a book hitting carpet. “What makes you so sure?” he asked, and Damian thought, ‘what happened to “he can’t know”?’

“What makes _you_ so sure?”

“I… I miss him, but I also know the way his dad looks at others who’ve come back. I wouldn’t wish that on him. Not ever.”

“What does it matter,” Damian said, taking a step away from comforting concealment. “When he will always look at me like that, regardless.”

“Dami,” Grayson said, finally, finally, and Damian tripped over his own sketchbook in his rush to claim his hug. Grayson scooped him up and Damian wrapped his legs around his brother’s waist and clenched his hands in his tshirt. “Damian, I’m so sorry. I have no excuse.”

“It’s fine,” he whispered back, clinging tighter and burying his face in Grayson’s neck, where the scent of him was strongest and most familiar, where he didn’t have to look around the room and realize that they were not in the Cave or at the Tower, and he was in fact still living in the den of his murderer.

“Your drawings, Damian, you’re not usually so-- single-minded,” Grayson said.

“My drawings?” Damian asked. He would have let go, but. Well. He was unlikely to let go for awhile, he thought. Grayson was physically strong enough for this embrace to continue indefinitely.

“Damian,” Grayson breathed. “Robin. You’re falling apart, aren’t you? Can anyone else see it?”

“I can,” the Matron whispered. “Or I wouldn’t have--” she sighed. “I would have, don’t let me lie to you.”

“You’re too soft for this business, Helena,” Grayson said, his hand rubbing soothing patterns on Damian’s back. In no one else’s grasp would he allow himself this level of relaxation. But Grayson had only ever seen _him_ , and so this was safe.

“Don’t I know it. I just can’t handle it when it’s kids, you know?"

"Believe me," Grayson replied, "You're not the only one."

“They can’t realize you think he’s the real deal,” the Matron said. Damian finally pried his fingers loose from Grayson’s clothing, and Grayson obligingly allowed him to stand alone again.

“How do you propose I do that?” Grayson asked.

“He is not exactly the most skilled at undercover work,” Damian added acidly.

“Thanks, little D,” Grayson said wryly, hand gentle through Damian’s curling mess of hair.

“Just, treat him like you have been,” the Matron said. “And I’ll work on an extraction. I grew up in Gotham, I’m sure I can find someone willing to get Robin home.”

“I’ll work on the extraction,” Grayson said. “I--”

“Richard, that’s really not--”

“I’m not leaving,” Damian said. “You’re obviously ill-equipped for this mission. Why father thought sending _you_ was in any way a good idea, I’ll never know.”

“Damian,” Grayson said, and his fingers stilled from their gentle petting, tangled and tugging at Damian’s hair. Grayson was very lucky Damian was still recovering himself from finally being acknowledged as who he was, or he would have a fractured radius. “Damian, he didn’t have a great deal of choice in the matter, and--”

“You can’t stay. They’ll just keep testing you, and then they’ll give you an implant, and then you’ll be theirs.”

“And whose are you?” Damian asked, staring fiercely at her.

“Theirs,” she said.

“You’re not very good at it,” Grayson said, sounding amused.

“No,” the Matron said. “I’m not. You guys need to leave now-- they’re about to look for Damian, since class will let out shortly.”

Damian took that as his cue to remove Grayson’s hands from his person. “Cease your manhandling. Your usage of ‘touch’ as reassurance is an obvious and easily exploitable weakness,” he informed him haughtily.

Grayson smiled at him with incandescent warmth, and Damian hesitantly returned the expression.

“Well shit,” the Matron said from behind him. Politely, he ignored her.


End file.
